2 Corinthians 7:1 (NRSV)  

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of God.

In case you haven’t heard, I am taking some vacation days next week and I have important plans to lounge on the beach with only minimal sunscreen, read fiction with no redeeming value and eat food that is bad for me! I have probably mentioned this to my co-workers between 1 and 1000 times in the past couple of weeks and the redundancy of my declaration has become a bit of a joke.

As much as I am looking forward to a change of scenery, getting ready to be gone is WORK. Each time I have opened my refrigerator door for the past week or so, I have been reminded of one of the things on my list. Something must have died in there, people, and it must be cleaned out!

I recognize the smell…it is citrus fruit that has outlived its usefulness. And I promise, I have looked for it. I have been through the produce bins where I keep my lemons and limes and oranges. Not there! I have nudged the jars and plastic containers and re-sealable bags every which way looking to see if there is something old and green hiding there, but I didn’t find anything suspicious. Finally, yesterday, I knew what needed to be done—it was time for the dreaded thorough cleaning of the refrigerator where everything comes out on the counter, the drawers come out and are cleaned, soapy water cleans off all the spills on the shelves, expiration dates are closely examined and things are poured down the drain that are really no longer viable. I HATE doing this!

I started at the bottom with the bins and checked behind them, cleaned and dried them one at a time. I moved up to the shelves, and when I got very close to the top, I found the culprit. It was a half of a lemon or lime, completely green and fuzzy now and indistinguishable. Here is the root of the problem—I don’t like to throw anything away, so I always see future usefulness. I can use that half piece of lemon the next time I make my remoulade! Or maybe I’ll just grab another whole one out of the bin and forget that little plastic bag until it starts to smell up the whole kitchen. And then, how long can I ignore the smell before I have to resort to a top-to-bottom cleaning?

I sometimes live my spiritual life the same way, just skimming the surface rather than doing the hard work and deep cleaning. Some bad habit starts to take root and I just ignore it. Maybe I start to neglect my morning devotional time, jumping straight into work because of the tyranny of the urgent, somebody with a deadline to meet is waiting on me. Or maybe I tend to stay up too late reading during these Corona days and then the clock is just so annoying in the morning that I hit the snooze alarm AGAIN because—really, who will know? Or I tend to lose track of how long I have been scrolling through Facebook, getting crankier and crankier at what I read there by the minute. And my spiritual life suffers.

There are many subtle ways our spiritual lives can get messy. Our networks of accountability are so out of whack these days, we may have lost some of the plumb lines by which we measure ourselves. The only thing I know to do is to be ruthless with myself! No one else is going to ask me the hard questions, so I have to stop sometimes and take stock. Is my life bringing glory to God in these days? Am I still keeping the important things prioritized for God’s kingdom? When I look at how I use my time, when I think about what other people see in me when I interact with them, when I do a “gut check” to see if I am in growth mode—do I feel an inner peace or do I know without a doubt that something “stinketh” within? Here is how we choose the better part—clean it up today before it truly starts to reek and a little bit of the rottenness starts to seep into everything around it!!

Living life on the surface is only satisfying in the short term. Here is the payoff for my deep cleaning efforts yesterday—every time I walk by my refrigerator today, I open the door and I like what I see—and smell! If something were to happen to me while I am out of town next week and, God forbid, someone had to come into my house for some reason AND if they looked into my refrigerator, I would not be embarrassed. (I know, I sound like my mother when I was a teenager.) But truly, it does matter that what is behind closed doors can stand the “light of day” test.

So, next week at the beach? I WILL use sunscreen with a reasonable SPF and I WILL have my devotional time BEFORE I open the novel I can’t wait to get back to and I WILL plan to have a salad and get some exercise every now and then, along with the nightly trips to get ice cream (it is vacation, after all.)

Have you done a gut-check lately? Have you allowed the Holy Spirit to take a peek beneath the surface? Is anything “rotten in Denmark?” If so, hear these words from scripture: 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Let us praise God for God’s faithfulness and may we be holy vessels of Jesus’ love and grace. Amen and Amen!